Ok, so earlier Tuesday, a series of leaks beginning with CNN and proceeding apace to include the New York Times and then Bloomberg and so on and so forth, appeared to tip Trump’s decision on the Iran deal.

Those stories amounted to competing narratives in terms of what the future holds for sanctions and the White House was immediately at pains to deny the New York Times’ account of a call with Macron. The cynical among you might accuse the administration of deliberately creating chaos in order to set the stage for more “fake news” bashing later on this evening.

The headline hockey whipsawed crude, which plunged on the CNN report and then rebounded a bit on the NYT story. You can read our full account of that here and for further background information regarding what’s at stake you can check out what we posted on Monday evening, but now we have the “official” word.

Trump is calling Netanyahu’s “Iran lied” presentation “conclusive evidence” and he’s again implicitly citing the IRGC/Quds’ activities in Syria, Tehran’s support of the Houthis in Yemen and Iran’s missile program as evidence of bad faith. He also characterized Iran’s efforts to cement the Shiite crescent as a “bloody ambition”.

Most notably, he also suggested that if he doesn’t pull out of the deal, they’ll be a “nuclear arms race” in the Mideast. He called the deal “decaying” and “rotten” and said if he “does nothing, we all know what will happen.” He also says Iran will soon be “on the cusp of obtaining” nukes.

"At the point when the U.S. had maximum leverage, this disastrous deal gave this regime, and it is a regime of great terror, many billions of dollars, some of it in actual cash. A great embarrassment to me as a citizen and to all citizens of the United States," Pres. Trump says pic.twitter.com/dt2jSufdq5

"Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie,” President Trump says. "The fact is, this was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn't bring calm. It didn't bring peace, and it never will.” https://t.co/LdFkRt50G9pic.twitter.com/o964UonHzF

"America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail. We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction and we will not allow a regime that chants 'death to America' to gain access to the most deadly weapons on Earth," Pres. Trump says https://t.co/LdFkRt50G9pic.twitter.com/Xs0mZNGuSt

Writing about a subject is the best
way to educate yourself about it, and when I flick through past work I remember how much
they taught me, if no one else. Mainly they taught me that I didn’t know very much. But they
also taught me that most other people didn’t know much either. Thus, some key themes
which stand out include the illusory control of policy makers, the presumed knowledge of
those looking to them to actively do good, the ease with which we fool ourselves, and how
best to protect capital in the face of such unavoidable uncertainty. -- Dylan Grice